


Finding Randall

by afterandalasia



Series: Randall/Sulley Series [1]
Category: Monsters Inc (2001)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, Guilt, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Monsters Inc., Post-Movie(s), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Monsters Inc., Sulley goes to help find Randall in the swamp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Randall

**Author's Note:**

> For an [anon prompt](http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/361.html?thread=53097#t53097) at the Disney Kink Meme. Thank you, anonymous!

They shut down the factory for four days following what the press is dubbing "The Downfall of Monsters Inc". The city experienced blackouts, share prices in Fear Co. rocketed, and panicking headlines abounded in the city's papers. Sulley spent most of it alternating between talking to the CDA and trying to persuade the company board that laughter was a valid way forwards.  
  
Mike, with a sort of sadness behind his eye that Sulley couldn't get him to talk about, went for a 'long weekend' with Celia and left Sulley alone in the house. At first, it was a good idea, as Sulley took up a lot of room at the best of times, and pacing around just made him take up more, but when the phone line cut out and the television stopped broadcasting, it didn't leave him with a lot to do. The piles of scaring textbooks that Mike still owned were suddenly repulsive to him, and there were only so many press-ups and chin-ups he could do before his muscles hurt too much to go on.  
  
It was during one of his conversations with the CDA that they mentioned that they were sending a team into the human world to bring Randall back. Having managed to analyse the door through which he was sent (now, off the buzz of adrenaline and fear, Sulley's regret for that was growing fast) and find a nearby "dry" door to an abandoned building, they had a team all put together.  
  
"I want to go with them," Sulley blurted. The CDA agent looked surprised for a moment, then shook her head.  
  
"No doing, Mr. Sullivan. Our operatives are trained for this kind of retrieval operation, and Mr. Boggs is a wanted criminal anyway."  
  
"And how exactly do you expect to _find_ him?" Sulley raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "Between his camouflage and his cold blood, you haven't a hope of finding him."  
  
"For a start, we're guessing that he wants to be found, and to get back to the monster world," she said, with grating patience. "And we're good at finding people, don't you worry."  
  
He didn't drop it, though. Even when she ended the interview, and gave him the phone number for her manager. Even after the phone lost power mid-way through a conversation _again_. Sulley knew when they were going, and that they must be doing it from the factory, so he just turned up and barged his way in.  
  
Roz gave him this long, hard look, then shook her head. "If you must, Mr. Sullivan," she said.  
  
  
  
  
  
Though he didn't pay much attention to it at the time, Sulley remembered from dodging in and out of doors that the human world was _varied_. It wasn't like Monstropolis, one big city, or at least the parts of it which he saw weren't. What he hadn't appreciated, though, was that this part of the human world was going to be so, so...  
  
Hot. Wet. He wasn't sure which part of it was worse. His fur was trying to stand on end and frizz out (Mike would have howled with laughter, and probably with justification), he was covered to the hips with what he sincerely hoped was just mud, and it was an effort not to pant in the muggy air. All that he really wanted to do was go home and sit in front of a fan. Or possibly the fridge.  
  
But he'd come out here to find Randall, to make amends for throwing him here in the first place. That was more important, even if a reptilian monster probably wouldn't object so much to the conditions quite so much. So he plowed on, keeping half an ear out for the whistle which would mean that one of the CDA agents had got there first.  
  
Falling still for a moment, he cursed. This was really bad. It would be a lie to say that scarers were not afraid of the human world; they just had that fear in a different form, and dealt with it differently. Even after visiting it when he was younger - perhaps especially after that night - Sulley had that prickling feeling down his spine, like someone was watching him.

He was picking his way across a dryish bit of hand when he heard a soft _splash_ behind him, and turned to see ripples moving across the water. Frowning, he paused for a moment, but the water went still again. Must have been a falling stone or something. Sulley turned to continue, just as a group of birds burst out of the trees off to his left, crawing at the air.  
  
He startled, turning towards the noise with teeth part-bared but feeling his heart pounding in his chest. One - two - three seconds passed with no more sound, and he let himself relax a little.  
  
"Damn it, Sullivan," he muttered. "Get some sleep the next three days."  
  
He was just taking another cautious step foward when the water at his feet erupted upwards. Stifling a yell, Sulley stumbled back, but _something_ was sliding fast and cold over his wet fur, raking across his skin and hissing like a cornered snake, and it was as it started to coil around his throat that he realised what was going on.  
  
Sulley grabbed hold of the thin form and wrenched it away, even as that left a long, deep scratch on his neck. "For all- Randall!" Despite Randall's furious wriggling, he managed to keep hold; if he looked closely, he could just see the outline of him against the sky. The stars were a little out-of-line with where they should have been.  
  
"Cut that out! And drop the rock."  
  
Just in time, he turned his cheek so that the rock bounced off his temple instead of catching him in the eye. Randall faded back into view, banged-up and cut across the head, teeth exposed as he hissed into Sulley's face. "Come to finish the job, Sullivan? Your human friends didn't quite manage it."  
  
"I came to help you get back to the monster world," Sulley growled, then grimaced and collected himself before continuing more calmly. "I came to help you come back, Randall."  
  
"How touching. I guess a little gloating that you won wouldn't go amiss either."  
  
"Won? You really..." He looked at Randall in sheer amazement, and something of that must have gotten through as Randall stopped fighting so much and fell still. "In two days, I almost lost everything and damn near destroyed the monster world. So no, I'm not really in the mood for gloating right now."  
  
Randall stopped baring his teeth, but was still peering suspiciously at him. "Sounds like someone's been busy."  
  
"Well, after I stopped you killing Boo, or whatever you planned to do to her-" Randall started to say something, but Sulley just continued straight over him; "-Waternoose got arrested, and the factory got shut. So yeah, I've had a pretty busy three days trying to persuade the board to start pursuing alternative energy, rather than just having the company collapse altogether."  
  
"You just can't stop breaking things, can you, Sullivan?" It wasn't as if Sulley was ever expecting Randall to stop spitting his name like that, but that didn't mean that it had ever stopped hurting less. "Is it part of your disdain for rules, or the other way around?"  
  
"The system was pretty broken when we decided that scaring kids was the only way forward. Think about how monster kids get scared, Randall. Were you ever scared of things when you were a kid?" Again, he didn't wait for Randall's answer. "And instead of trying to stop fears, we go ahead and feed on them, use them. What does that make us?"  
  
The words hung between them in the air for a long while. "Humans aren't like monsters, Sullivan," said Randall, more quietly now. Almost calmly, Sulley would have said. "Now, are you going to put me down, or what?"  
  
"Are you going to be able to keep from trying to kill me."  
  
"I'll give it a try," he said, dryly.  
  
That had to be good enough for now. Cautiously, Sulley lowered Randall to the ground; he backed up a few paces, flicking his scales to get rid of some of the mud clinging to him, but didn't try to run off or kill anyone again. Probably a good start.  
  
"So... you really came back to find me," said Randall. It was spoken in the same cold tone as ever, but if Sulley listened closely he thought he might just hear something else beneath it. Probably disbelief, of course, but he could hope that it was... well, hope. "Why the hell would you do that?"  
  
Okay, so it was probably just disbelief.  
  
"Because what I did was wrong. And I'm sorry."

Over the years, various people - starting with Mike - had said that seeing Sulley apologise had a strange effect. Probably just because there was so much of him to be apologising, or because monsters 'like him' didn't apologise much in life, or maybe just something about Sulley himself. But it seemed that, now, even Randall was seeing it. First confusion, then shock flickered across Randall's face, and he crossed one arm over his body to rest the opposite elbow on it.  
  
"You really mean that," said Randall quietly.  
  
"I do."  
  
There was another uncomfortable pause, then Randall snorted. "What, are you expecting an apology from me, now? Forget it."  
  
Sulley rolled his eyes. "You're welcome. Look, those injuries..."  
  
"Shovel," Randall supplied. "Got quite a sharp edge, those things. Though I should probably count myself lucky," he added with more of a hiss, "that it wasn't a shotgun."  
  
"You should come back to Monstropolis, get them treated."  
  
"And if I refuse? Will you force me back?"  
  
Randall was eyeing him warily, the tip of his tail and his two lower pairs of legs starting to fade out again. Sulley honestly hadn't thought that far, had just been concentrating on the fact that he had to find Randall, and to apologise. It seemed so self-evident that Randall would want to come back to the monster world. Back _home_.  
  
"No," he said, finally. His voice almost faded away, and Randall's squint softened for a moment. "I won't force you back. I forced you here in the first place, and it wouldn't be right to do it again. But don't stay here out of spite, Randall. Monstropolis is still your home."  
  
"Where they're waiting to arrest me." Randall's tail whipped across the ground, knocking leaf litter and small stones aside. Darker tones seeped into his scales. "Is that why they sent you in? So that you could lure me into a sense of security before they come in with the handcuffs and the heartbeat detectors?"  
  
Oh, so _that_ was how they would have tracked him down. Figured. "I asked to come. Demanded, really," Sulley admitted, and Randall looked at him in rather franker disbelief that time. "I told you, Randall, I came to make amends. And I genuinely think that you'd be better off in Monstropolis than here."  
  
Randall... sneered, possibly, or grimaced. Sulley wasn't too sure.  
  
"They can treat those wounds. Yes," he admitted carefully, "you may well be arrested. But it's home, Randall. And what you did... well, you didn't do it out of malice. To Boo."  
  
"The kid. You really gave a damn."  
  
"She was... just like a monster kid."  
  
Randall paused for a moment. "I wasn't going to kill her, you know." An uncomfortable shuffle, then he added: "Dead kids don't scream."  
  
"Yeah, sure." That was definitely the reason. Sulley shook his head, mostly to himself, as Randall gave a grumpy shift. It dawned slowly: Randall was never going to admit that he wanted to come back to Monstropolis, that the scales had tipped just slightly in favour of going home.  
  
"I could just drag you back, you know," Sulley said. He didn't mean to make it sound quite so much like an offer.  
  
Randall bristled half-heartedly. Had he even managed to find something to eat here? Boo had done well enough on monster food, so monsters could probably eat things from the human world, but Randall didn't have that knowledge. And it would be a hell of a risk to find out. "I'd like to see you try."  
  
He genuinely wasn't sure whether Randall was still fighting with him, or whether that was a sign of defeat. Sulley stepped in and scooped Randall up and over his shoulder again, clamping him in place with one powerful arm. With a hiss, Randall tried to writhe away again, but (and this could just have been Sulley's imagination, but he was fairly sure that it wasn't) his struggles were not quite as frantic as they were before.  
  
"I'll pay you back for this, Sullivan," snarled Randall, from somewhere over his shoulder.  
  
It wasn't _necessarily_ a threat. Sulley gave half a smile, and started to make his way back towards the door to the monster world. He'd learnt a long time ago not to give up on things, or on people, in life.


End file.
